By Jason Snell

January 9, 2015 7:41 AM PT

Eight years of the iPhone

Eight years ago today Steve Jobs got up on stage and introduced a widescreen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone, and a breakthrough Internet communications device: The iPhone.

That day I was feeding details back to Peter Cohen via instant message, for what we called our “live news story.” (Macworld switched to a straight liveblog and eliminated the intermediate step maybe a year later.) Some guy named Mat Honan wrote our news story.

Reaction to the announcement was mixed. Ever the curmudgeon, Rob Griffiths wrote that he was “iDisappointed” — Rob wanted more iLife with his iPhone—and Computerworld’s Mike Elgan said that “Jobs blew it.”

A few days later I managed to get my hands on one for a few minutes and was amazed by it.

If you’d like to hear some fantastic analysis of the event, I highly recommend episode 30 of The Prompt, in which Federico, Myke, and Stephen break down the entire event, complete with clips.

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